Eric Hamelback, CEO of America’s National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association (NHBPA), was raised on a cattle farm in Frierson, Louisiana. He had early ambitions to become a vet, but he said he and organic chemistry just couldn’t get along.
He experienced the backstretch at Louisiana Downs, the Fair Grounds and Oaklawn Park, working with a veterinary practice, doing rounds with Dr Milton McClure during school holidays, and he also spent time with prolific trainers Bobby Barnett and Bob Holthus and fell in love with horses and horseracing. So, with his veterinary ambitions thwarted, he decided after graduating from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge that Thoroughbred management would be his path.
He worked his way up at Adena Springs farms in Kentucky and Florida, becoming yearling manager, and then general manager at Live Oak Stud in Florida and back at Adena Springs, again as general manager. But he had an urge to serve the industry more broadly. He felt strongly that more horse people needed to be in key positions, where policies are shaped within the industry, and in 2015 he was appointed CEO of the NHBPA, which represents nearly 30,000 horsemen and women.
I haven’t always been very complementary about the NHBPA and its legal challenge to HISA (the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act). I compared it to the Flat Earth Society. So I was surprised when Hamelback invited me for a little chat. I read up on him, and was impressed – and therefore a bit disappointed - to discover he had played linebacker in his youth.
Hamelback looks like a man who played linebacker, and he looks like a man who could polish off a steak brought to him on a wheelbarrow, and our views may sometimes differ. But he is one of the most sincere, concerned and thoughtful individuals I have come across in the industry.
Who do you believe is the most important figure in the history of racing around the world?
For me, without question it’s John Nerud, a racing pioneer who trained the great Dr Fager and helped create the Breeders’ Cup. I was fortunate to have some personal interaction with him after he called me in 2013, which led to some great conversations before he passed away in 2015 at 102 years of age.
Mr Nerud was a horsemen’s horseman, who won more than 1,000 races during his 44-year training career, mostly for Tartan Farms, located in Ocala, Florida, where he served as trainer, president and general manager. He taught me one of the most valuable lessons that I still try to foster today. He said, “Eric, you have to remember the two most important groups in racing – owners and horseplayers.” He told me to always put the horse first, and make sure the industry protects owners and horseplayers.
What is your favorite race and venue anywhere in the world?
I have to pick the $1 million Super Derby at Louisiana Downs as my favourite race because of the day Alysheba rallied in the stretch to win by a half-length in the summer of 1987, which secured my pursuit of a career within the horseracing industry as a 17-year-old high-school student working at Louisiana Downs. [The race was a G1 then but has since been downgraded to G3.]
My favorite venue without question is Oaklawn Park. So many years working there, with such an amazing atmosphere and surrounded by a town that passionately supports the industry and, more importantly, the horse.
What is your fondest memory in racing?
Red Bullet’s win in the 2000 Preakness (see video below) as it pertains to the birth of my son, Austen, born April 29, 2000. Red Bullet was in the first yearling crop I raised as yearling manager for Adena Springs. I had Austen on the floor and I was next to him on my hands and knees when the race was run and I was riding Red Bullet all the way down the stretch as hard as Jerry Bailey [Red Bullet’s jockey], and when he took off I was screaming in the living room and Debra, my wife, thought there was something wrong with Austen. It was just amazing.
What do you see as the biggest challenge racing faces today?
This one is very tough … however, if you begin to look at racing’s issues by figuratively taking steps backward to get to a point where it is possible to tackle the challenge, one aspect continues to stand by my side as a possible solution: The promotion and education of horseracing – not a venue, not a race, not even an individual.
What we see in the industry now are problems with relevance, labor shortages, degrees of separation from agriculture, competing dollars for expendable income, false rhetoric that I believe is applied to medications, the general public perhaps not understanding fully the weeds of our industry - by which I mean there are so many intricacies many find it too difficult to deal with, along with the lack of understanding of rules and adjudication. And I could go on. But one thing that could help in every one of these situations, in my opinion, is proper industry-led promotion and education. You don’t have to look far on social media to see the lack of accurate knowledge about the industry as some keyboard warriors pound out incomplete and inaccurate facts about it.
At one point, we had an effective mechanism in place that would have and should have been the industry’s voice. The industry saw the need and yet the powers-that-be (many of whom are still in play) did not like the initiative’s ‘open to everyone’ message. While there are some promotional snippets still being used, it is safe to say we have no collective promotion of our industry as an agri-business, nor do we have an education arm that demands our relevance and importance to the nation’s economy. This must change.
If you could change one thing in racing, what would it be?
Very tough to pick one thing. However, playing off the above answer, I would have to say implementing the way the industry promotes racing. A few years back, I wrote a simple white paper discussing how I thought our industry could promote itself. I did not have to look far to find a comparison – the PGA [Professional Golfers’ Association].
The PGA went through issues similar to what we see now in that their sport needed to attract a larger, broader fan base. They developed a players’ association, began a check-off funding mechanism, highlighted participants, and boom – PGA explosion. Our industry could do that without question, but it takes the right group to be in charge, a group that understands the industry and places the horse first.